Life Of Muhammad was a thoughtful and important series

Life Of Muhammad saw
Rageh Omaar concluding a thorough and revealing series about a subject most of us don’t know enough about.

Rageh Omaar explores the life of the prophet Muhammad (Picture: BBC)

The final episode of Rageh Omaar’s Life Of Muhammad chronicled the latter stages of the prophet’s life and the way in which his behaviour shaped the Islam we recognise today.

Omaar began by exploring some of the ammunition critics of Islam find in Muhammad’s life, like the barbaric punishments he recommended, or the fact that he may have married a nine-year-old when he was 53.

The summary of his final years was followed by a brief run-down of Islam’s lifespan since Muhammad’s time, from the religion’s great schism between Sunnis and Shi’as to the banning of the Burqua in France earlier this year.

Here the more familiar media images of Islam entered the scene, with placards and hate crimes the order of the day as Omaar and his experts attempted to explain concepts like Shariah law and the veiled Muslim woman.

Being a series of three hour-long episodes means that Life of Muhammad was by no means comprehensive, but it was an honest and thorough account of a man and a religion that many of us would do better to understand.